16. The Chipko Women’s Concept of Freedom

Vandana Shiva

On 30 November 1986, Chamundeyi, a woman of Nahi-Kala village in Doon Valley, was collecting fodder in the forest when she heard trucks climbing up the mountain toward the limestone quarry in the area. But since September 1986 there had been a Chipko camp on the road to the quarry set up by the village communities of Thano region, to stop the mining operations which have created ecological havoc in the region; the trucks should not, therefore, have been there. The quarry workers had attacked the protesters, removed them from the blockade, and driven the trucks through. Chamundeyi threw down her sickle, raced down the slope and stood in front of the climbing trucks, telling the drivers that they could go only over her dead body After dragging her for a distance, they stopped and reversed.

In April 1987 the people of Nahi-Kala were still protesting because the government had been tardy in taking action to close the mine although the lease had expired in 1982. The mining operations were also in total violation of the 1980 Forest Conservation Act. People’s direct action to stop the mining was an outcome of the government’s failure to implement its own laws. The quarry contractor meantime tried to take the law into his own hands. On 20 March 1987, he brought about 200 hired thugs to the area who attacked the peaceful protesters with stones and iron rods. But the children, women and men did not withdraw from the blockade. They are their own leaders, their own decision-makers, their own source of strength.

The myth that movements are created and sustained by charismatic leaders from outside is shattered by the non-violent struggle in Nahi-Kala in which ordinary women like Itwari Devi and Chamundeyi have provided local leadership through extraordinary strength. It is the invisible strength of women like them that is the source of the staying power of Chipko — a movement whose activities in its two decades of evolution have been extended from embracing trees to embracing living mountains and living waters. Each new phase of Chipko is created by invisible women. In 1977, Bachni Devi of Advani created Chipko’s ecological slogan: ‘What do the forests bear? Soil, water and pure air.’

A decade later, in Doon Valley, Chamundeyi inspired the Chipko poet Ghanshyam ‘Shailani’ to write a new song:

A fight for truth has begun
At Sinsyaru Khala
A fight for rights has begun
In Malkot Thano
Sister, it is a fight to protect
Our mountains and forests.
They give us life
Embrace the life of the living trees
And streams to your hearts
Resist the digging of mountains
Which kills our forests and streams
A fight for life has begun at
Sinsyaru Khala

On 29 March during a meeting of friends of Chipko, I spent a day with Chamundeyi and Itwari Devi — to learn about their hidden strengths, to learn from them about the hidden strengths of nature. Here are some extracts from our exchange of experiences:

Vandana: What destruction has been caused by limestone mining in Nahi-Kala?

Chamundeyi: When I came to Nahi 17 years ago, the forests were rich and dense with ringal, tun, sinsyaru, gald, chir, and banj. Gujral’s mine has destroyed the ringal, the oak, the sinsyaru. Our water sources which are nourished by the forests have also dried up. Twelve springs have gone dry. Two years ago, the perennial waterfall, Mande-ka-Chara which originates in Patali-ka-Dhar and feeds Sinsyaru Khala went dry. Mining is killing our forests and streams, our sources of life. That is why we are ready to give up our lives to save our forests and rivers.

Itwari: Sinsyaru-ka-Khala was a narrow perennial stream full of lush sinsyaru bushes. Today it is a wide barren bed of limestone boulders. With the destruction caused by mining our water, mills, forests and paddy fields have been washed away. When Gujral first came he was in rags. I remember I had come to the water mill to get flour ground. Gujral had come with a dilapidated truck, and his lunch was a dry chappati, with raw onion. Today, after having robbed our mountain for 26 years, Gujral is a rich man with 12 trucks who can hire armies of thugs to trouble and attack us, as he hired armies of labour to dig our mountain. We have been camping on the road for seven months now to stop his mine, and his efforts to hurt us and threats to kill us keep increasing.

First he started picking limestone boulders from the river bed. Then he climbed the mountain. He has done ten years of very intensive mining and turned our rich and productive mountain into a desert. The source of Sinsyaru has become a desert. We decided then that the mine must be closed if our children were to survive.

The young boys of the Yuvak Mandal who are working with our Mahila Mandal to get the mine closed, were six months or one year old when Gujral first came to our village. They have spent a lifetime watching him treat our land and resources as his private property. The Chipko protest was precipitated when the boys went to demand royalty payment for the mining in Gram Sabha land. Gujral said to them, ‘You have grown on crumbs I have thrown to you — how dare you demand royalty from me.’ The boys said, ‘We have grown with the nurturance of our mothers — and the mountains and forests and streams which are like our mothers — and we will no longer let you destroy our sources of sustenance. We will not let your trucks go to the mine.

C: On 20 March we saw Gujral’s truck come. They pushed out the five people who were at the Satyagraha camp — meantime the women rushed down to the camp. We held on to the trucks and said, ‘Please stop, listen to us.’ They had hired women from the Dehra Dun slums to assault us — they pushed us aside and went to the line. Eight thugs stayed with us and said, ‘Listen, mothers and sisters, you have been sitting on a Chipko protest for six months now with the Chipko activists. What facilities have they created for you in six months?’ I said, ‘Listen brothers, Gujral has been digging our mountain for 26 years, what has he done for us? The Chipko people have been with us for only six months of struggle — come back in 26 years and find out what they helped us create.’ Gujral’s people said, ‘Ask for whatever you need — we will provide it.’ We replied, ‘We have only one need and one demand, that the mine be closed.’ They said they would stop mining and only take what has already been mined. We told them, ‘No, those stones came from the mountain and we will put them back to stabilize it. We will make check-dams with them. We will protect our forests and mountain with the boulders. These boulders are the flesh of Dharti Ma (Mother Earth). We will return them to where they belong, and heal her wounds.’ Then they said, ‘For each trip we make, we will give you earnings from our truckload of limestone.’ We continued to insist that we wanted the mine closed, that nothing could tempt us. They said ‘We will give you a truck for transport. Bahuguna cannot give you that.’ We answered ‘We are our own transport, our feet are our most dependable transport. We do not need your trucks. We only want the mine closed.’

V: This is the third time they have attacked you; what happened in the November [1986] incident?

C: I had just fed my children and was going to the forest for fodder with my sons Suraj Singh and Bharat Singh. I saw a truck coming. I sent Suraj Singh to inform the Satyagrahis at the Camp, but they had already been attacked and removed from the road. I met the trucks half way up the mine and put myself in front of them and said, ‘The trucks can go only over my dead body.’ They finally turned back.

V: What are the three most important things in life you want to conserve?

C: Our freedom and forests and food. Without these, we are nothing, we are impoverished. With our own food production we are prosperous — we do not need jobs from businessmen and governments — we make our own livelihood — we even produce crops for sale like rajma and ginger; two quintals of ginger can take care of all our needs. Forests are central as sources of fertilizer and fodder. Our freedom to work in the forests and to farm is very important. Gujral’s mine is destroying our work and our prosperity while they talk of mining and ‘creating’ work and prosperity.

V: Do you feel tempted by his bribes?

I: Gujral offered my son Rs.500,000 if he would remove me from the Chipko protest. My son replied, ‘Money I can get anywhere, but my mother’s dignity and respect comes from the village community, and we can never sacrifice that.’

C: They went to my brother and said, ‘Get your sister away.’ Gujral himself came and said he would make a school and hospital for us. We asked him why it had taken him 26 years to think of all this? Now it was too late. We are determined to close his mine and protect ourselves.

V: What is your source of strength (shakti)? What is Chipko’s strength?

I: Shakti comes to us from these forests and grasslands, we watch them grow, year in and year out through their internal shakti and we derive our strength from it. We watch our streams renew themselves and we drink their clear, sparkling water, that gives us shakti. We drink fresh milk, we eat ghee, we eat food from our own fields. All this gives us not just nourishment for the body but a moral strength, that we are our own masters, we control and produce our own wealth. That is why it is ‘primitive’, ‘backward’ women who do not buy their needs from the market but produce for themselves, who are leading Chipko. Our power is nature’s power. Our power against Gujral comes from these inner sources and is strengthened by his attempts to oppress and bully us with his false power of money. We have offered ourselves, even at the cost of our lives, for a peaceful protest to close this mine, to challenge and oppose the power that Gujral represents. Each attempt to violate us has strengthened our integrity. They stoned us on 20 March when they returned from the mine. They stoned our children and hit them with iron rods, but they could not destroy our shakti.